Think of This As: What Would You Suggest To People Who Want to Grow And Be Part of Open Source Community?
What should I/other people know about for events to go to, and what groups to join to be part of online to help make the most positive impacts? What organizations should I get in contact with to assist their missions to grow what is possible?
(Whatever you suggest can help other people too who are just now and onward joining the community. Think of any way that can really grow it)
I am learning a lot by doing for various things for my own projects and contributions to open source but what would I have to do to fully be part of the community In-Person and Online to grow it in various good ways?
Near-term I want to help in spare time with growing Mobile, UI/UX, Marketing, Ways to Show Which Projects Need Funding, Bring New Devs To Open Source, Ways to Help Encourage Collaboration on Projects That Need Devs/Other Fields, Animation, and Social Media parts of open source community.
Also want to grow long-term the worldwide movement to make open source transportation of anything and everything a reality: HSR, trains, trams, cars, bike-cars, bikes, walking bikes, submarines, motorcycles, VTOLs, airships. etc
Help me/other people help you all! Please and thanks!
Donating. You could also try getting your workplace to also donate as well.
Documentation documentation documentation! One of the most often overlooked and wildly important aspects of many major projects is accurate, up-to-date, and detailed documentation. If you’re not a programmer, one of the number one ways you can contribute is to help draft and produce documentation for applications you enjoy! It’s still a contribution to the project!
And please don’t just dump AI output into the docs
For real, that’s actually the opposite of helpful. Documentation should be based on experience from use combined with discussions with the devs (providing they have the time).
Use opensource software, donate/contribute if you can, post about opensource software, and if you have to pay money for software, pay companies which fund opensource software (Like steam, my beloved)
What’s up with all these capitalisations?
Eh I’m kinda used to writing like that at this point haha. I used to do it to bring attention to certain text but now it is what I do out of a bad habit
I’ll reformat it tomorrow
Find something broken/unimplemented and fix/implement it.
If you can’t code, you can help with documentation or by reproducing/expanding existing, but incomplete, bug reports.
Practice those tasks in a large, already functional open source project. Try to shadow people who already do them. Very relevant link for libreoffice contributors of all kinds
Relevant more general guide (which doesn’t look too out of date) here
Lastly I’ll mention joining organizations adjacent to what you are already excited about working in. I do research code and joined an organization for data scientists in academia. They do regular training and events in things like UI design and documentation.
